Overdrive or distortion?

Electronic Music Production // Dark Arts
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Pelecaras
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Overdrive or distortion?

Post by Pelecaras »

Hi all,

New to the forum. Been a technohead since '92. Been (trying) to produce techno only about a year.
Thought that I would dive straight in with a question.
Forgive the naivety of question but I'm still learning.

Are overdrive and distortion the same thing or do they have distinct effect on a sound?

What are your favourite plug ins for giving sounds a set of balls?
I find I can't go wrong with D16 group Redopter
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by innovine »

Overdrive is quite mild. Distortion is much more in your face.

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Koichi
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by Koichi »

In my mind : overdrive is a type of distortion but lighter than the effect usually called "distortion" and will give you a boost, slight grit. Effect called distortion = fuzzy, lots of extra harmonics.

Favourite plugin in ohm force ohmicide - multiband distortion - you can have four channels of distortion targeting different frequencies, with different kinds of distortion/feedback etc.

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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by Alume »

The definitions says it all actually. I remember them not being the same.

Overdrive is when you overdrive the signal.
Distortion is when you really distort the signal.

Sorry my basic understanding of synthesis is pretty much zero.

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Críoch
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by Críoch »

Hmm.. Not sure really. Obviously they both produce distortion at the output end. Tonally, I'll choose lives OD or saturation depending on what I want. OD can be fizzy or muted easily. There seems to be more options available with lives saturation.

Hard to say haha
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Lost to the Void
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by Lost to the Void »

Technically, overdrive is emulating an amp being overdriven.

Overdrive is soft clipping, whereas distortion is hard clipping.


Think of a compressor but instead of compression happening at the threshold, it is clipping.
Distortion would be where the ratio is set to infinity, and all signal above the threshold is clipped. With overdrive the approach to the "threshold" is smooth, like a soft knee, and the ratio is much lower, so the drive is proportional to the amount over the threshold.

Does that make sense?

Overdrive will tend to preserve more transient information and will act proportionally to the signal, and provide more even harmonics.
Distortion just hits everything, and has much more of a scattering of even and odd harmonics, and will clip transients.
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Koichi
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by Koichi »

Lost to the Void wrote:Technically, overdrive is emulating an amp being overdriven.

Overdrive is soft clipping, whereas distortion is hard clipping.


Think of a compressor but instead of compression happening at the threshold, it is clipping.
Distortion would be where the ratio is set to infinity, and all signal above the threshold is clipped. With overdrive the approach to the "threshold" is smooth, like a soft knee, and the ratio is much lower, so the drive is proportional to the amount over the threshold.

Does that make sense?

Overdrive will tend to preserve more transient information and will act proportionally to the signal, and provide more even harmonics.
Distortion just hits everything, and has much more of a scattering of even and odd harmonics, and will clip transients.
...I've been on this forum long enough to know that I should have just waited till you answered this.

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Críoch
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by Críoch »

Haha
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Lost to the Void
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by Lost to the Void »

Koichi wrote:
Lost to the Void wrote:Technically, overdrive is emulating an amp being overdriven.

Overdrive is soft clipping, whereas distortion is hard clipping.


Think of a compressor but instead of compression happening at the threshold, it is clipping.
Distortion would be where the ratio is set to infinity, and all signal above the threshold is clipped. With overdrive the approach to the "threshold" is smooth, like a soft knee, and the ratio is much lower, so the drive is proportional to the amount over the threshold.

Does that make sense?

Overdrive will tend to preserve more transient information and will act proportionally to the signal, and provide more even harmonics.
Distortion just hits everything, and has much more of a scattering of even and odd harmonics, and will clip transients.
...I've been on this forum long enough to know that I should have just waited till you answered this.
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Críoch
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by Críoch »

There's probably a laminate flooring forum y'know.. Sure they have one for light bulbs FFS.
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by Pelecaras »

Thanks guys, this is the reason that I am thankful to have found subsekt, because the knowledge of the people here is priceless.

I see the point about distortion adding harmonics to the sound, this is great in some instances but when I sequence phoscyon, sometimes distortion just sounds too fuzzy. Thinking of investing in guitar rig 5, any thoughts?



Thanks for the knowledge guys.
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Pelecaras
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by Pelecaras »

Technically, overdrive is emulating an amp being overdriven.

Overdrive is soft clipping, whereas distortion is hard clipping.


Think of a compressor but instead of compression happening at the threshold, it is clipping.
Distortion would be where the ratio is set to infinity, and all signal above the threshold is clipped. With overdrive the approach to the "threshold" is smooth, like a soft knee, and the ratio is much lower, so the drive is proportional to the amount over the threshold.

Does that make sense?

Overdrive will tend to preserve more transient information and will act proportionally to the signal, and provide more even harmonics.
Distortion just hits everything, and has much more of a scattering of even and odd harmonics, and will clip transients.

It makes perfect sense, it's a great explanation my friend. Thank you
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by terryfalafel »

This has been answered quite nicely, but here's my 2p...

I think to answer the question it's relevant to mention that these terms have come from the guitar scene. Guitar players have been overdriving / distorting guitars for decades before electronic music came along.

Overdrive can be defined as the sound of the input circuit of a device being pushed beyond its limit by the incoming signal. When guitar players started to do this, it was by boosting the guitar's signal beyond the headroom of the valve circuit which was amplifying it. The result was a softly clipped signal with light compression which sounded through the speaker like increased sustain and additional pleasing harmonic content. Technically any booster, whatever you call it, which pushes a signal past the headroom of the next device in the chain is overdrive.

Distortion I would define as a device specifically made to go beyond soft clipping. Normally in a guitar distortion pedal you boost the signal to push the amp harder, but also clip the signal inside the pedal too. The component which is overdriven in the pedal determines the sound of the distortion (diode, various types of transistor etc).

So all distortions are overdrive, but not all overdrive is distortion.

I think these days, people in the electronic scene and in the guitar / live recording scene use the two terms just as they've been described here.

Overdrive = soft clipping

Distortion = aggressive, hard clipping

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Lost to the Void
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by Lost to the Void »

Pelecaras wrote:Thanks guys, this is the reason that I am thankful to have found subsekt, because the knowledge of the people here is priceless.

I see the point about distortion adding harmonics to the sound, this is great in some instances but when I sequence phoscyon, sometimes distortion just sounds too fuzzy. Thinking of investing in guitar rig 5, any thoughts?



Thanks for the knowledge guys.
Guitar rig is native instruments ass gravy.

Either get positive grid bias or bias fx, or amplitude 3, or search for the thread on distortion where I link to a load of really really good free amp modellers. Lepou stuff is awesome.
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Lost to the Void
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by Lost to the Void »

terryfalafel wrote:

So all distortions are overdrive, but not all overdrive is distortion.
That's sort of true technically, but also not, it's more of a semantic issue.

A lot of distortion boxes have attenuation on the output, so you don't actually then get a signal boost and don't have to drive your amp input, so you can effectively send a distorted signal in to your amp at a non-overdriving level.

I suppose really it technically all began with boost pedals, but then overdrive pedals were used to emulate boosting and overdriving an amp, and they led to further overdriving of the amp itself, and then that led to distortion.

Let's not even get started on fuzz. Or fuzz distortion, or self oscillating fuzz....

Some distortions aren't necessarily overdriving but starving the voltage. It's a complicated world if you really want to get pedantic about it.

The simplest way is just to say
Overdrive - soft clip
Distortion - hard clip
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Pelecaras
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by Pelecaras »

Gonna download demo of bias fx, it looks very good on the website. Thanks for the heads up Urtication.
Would it be capable of the kind of dirt that Jeff Mills got on the waveform transmission albums?
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Lost to the Void
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by Lost to the Void »

No idea, I can say that bias (never used bias fx) is the best guitar amp simulation I have used. When you back a guitar down running in to it, the signal starves just like a real amp, it's pretty amazing.
I would imagine that it doesn't do the same dirt as on transmissions though, as I suspect that was just overdriving desk channels.

You'd be better off using klanghelm SDRR if all you are after is desk drive.
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Re: Overdrive or distortion?

Post by jim_kezzle »

I wonder if there is a recurring theme on the flooring forum where newbies get joining and asking which has already been answered like how to keep reverb rumble on your tongue and groove connections


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